Heidi: Why do want to have a collection, what sort of collection? The first thing you need is the dreaded mission statement. I think that you should spend the first year and the first money really sounding out the community about what they want to see in that bank building, and using that information to craft a mission statement with the Board. Only then would I even *consider* building a collection. Perhaps people want a venue for traveling exhibitions. There are wonderful exhibitions that are professionally researched and mounted, with catalogs and educational material available for a few thousand dollars. You could do a dozen traveling exhibitions with the budget you describe, assuming that you have security and capital improvements already paid for (like making the old bank building into a museum, with lighting, climate control, security and fire systems, and all that stuff. I definitely do not think that you should start collecting objects without a mission. My $.02 Eric Siegel [log in to unmask]